Arm Workouts For Women, Part 1

No woman should have to endure the embarrassment of having flabby arms. After all, having to think twice before going sleeveless with your favorite dress is not fun…

Part of going sleeveless involves directly exercising all the major muscles in your arms:

Biceps = 2 muscles

Triceps = 3 muscles

Shoulders = 3 muscles

Now those are a lot of muscles… But don’t worry about it because we have already done all the work for you. To get you started, we have created some arm workouts for women that you can do in the privacy of your home. To download the first workout, right click on the link below and then select “save target as” or “save link as.” The second workout is available in part 2 of this guide.

If your lower back starts to arch when standing, use a split stance – one leg forward, one leg back

When exercising your biceps and triceps, keep your elbows and shoulders frozen in place – this prevents other muscles from taking over

Avoid the temptation to “heave-ho” or jerk the weights up

Terminology

If you are just starting out, you may not be familiar with the terms in the arm workout. Let’s fix that:

Repetition: the completion of an exercise movement from start to finish.

Set: a group of repetitions that are completed consecutively without any rest in between.

Circuit: a group of sets of different exercises that are completed consecutively without any rest in between.

So for the first circuit in the above arm workout, you would complete 15 repetitions for the overhead dumbbell press with an underhand grip, then immediately move on to the overhead dumbbell extension and complete 15 repetitions, then immediately move on to dumbbell curls and complete 15 repetitions.

Once you have completed all three exercises in circuit fashion, you can rest for 90 seconds. Then, you would do this circuit the exact same way two more times for a total of three sets for each exercise.

How much weight should I use for each exercise in this workout?

It’s hard to give an exact number here because every woman will have a different level of fitness and strength. But, you want to pick a weight that brings you close to failure towards the last couple of repetitions in a set.

So if you are just starting out, you’ll have to experiment a little here. Just make sure you use a challenging weight or you won’t notice any changes.

The gear

You will need three basic pieces of equipment to do this arm workout:

Dumbbells

Resistance bands

A door anchor

All of these are relatively inexpensive compared to other types of fitness equipment. And you can get some great deals if you shop around on websites like eBay or craigslist. You might even have a friend with this stuff collecting dust in the back of their closet.

For dumbbells I recommend getting a set that can have weight added and removed. And for resistance bands, make sure you get a set with a high level of resistance.

Arm workout frequency

We recommend doing the above arm workout 2-3 times a week, depending on how well you recover. If you are just starting out, you’ll probably do best with 2 workouts per week.

Now you don’t want to fall into the trap of doing the same workout over and over again – you’ll hit a plateau. So make sure you check out part 2 of this guide where you’ll get another arm workout and you’ll also learn how to modify these workouts so that you don’t plateau.

Final tips

As I said in the beginning of this article, doing arm workouts is just part of going sleeveless, especially if you have a lot of body fat.

If you have too much body fat, you’ll also need to watch your nutrition in addition to combining total body exercises with specialized arm exercises:

To prevent any muscle build up, simply do fifteen repetitions or more for all your sets. Alternatively, you could decrease caloric intake and do lots of cardio if you don’t want to lift weights – but I don’t recommend this as it’s very unhealthy.

Thanks for the tips! However, you didn’t mention how/when to use the final three exercises (Dumbbell Lateral, Band Press, Dumbbell Curl Wide Underhand). Are they just alternate versions, or should be interchange them with the first three?

Thank you! Trying to lose arm fat for my wedding in 3 months~ I am on a balanced but very strict diet as well.

I have started doing 4 sets of a specific arm toning exercise say Overhead dumbbell extension with 15 reps each with abt 30 seconds rest in between each set. Then I move on to another workout say dumbbell curls with the same pattern of 4 sets with 15 reps each with 30 seconds break between the sets.

I do a total of 7 exercises in the above manner. Am I doing too much or is it okay. I use a 2.2 Lb Dumbbell. Even though I did about 7 circuits, my arms recovered really fast the next day. Shall I continue with this pattern? I have just started these exercises a month back. For the first three weeks I did only 3 circuits but since this week I have increased the no. of circuits. Your feedback would be highly beneficial.

7 exercises is fine, but I wouldn’t do more than this. I would suggest increasing the weight you are using since you aren’t getting sore any more. Also, add some variety into your circuits. Switch up the exercises, do some exercises back-to-back without any rest, do some new exercises, etc. This will prevent your arms from adapting.